R
ichard Beam took no time giving away Danny Hembree’s case. And in retrospect, it was the only chance Hembree had: “Ladies and gentlemen, a lot of what Mr. Bell said is absolutely true.” Beam had one of those clean-shaven, shiny Kojak-style heads. He was well respected in Gaston County. “The only issue is . . . what killed Heather Catterton? . . . There is going to be described for you the
injuries
that resulted from this violent assault—but . . . not
one,
will you hear the pathologist say.
No
problems!
No
contusions to the face!
No
bruises! She will tell you that the toxicology screen for Miss Catterton . . . had various items in it that could possibly be a cause of death.” Beam had a way about him. He was able to convey his theories and thoughts with a delicate emphasis. He was passionate for his client’s well-being.
“It’s their burden”—he pointed at the prosecutors—“to prove to you what caused Ms. Catterton’s death.” Then, knowing he was facing what was an Everest-sized mountain to climb in getting around Hembree’s confessions, the appointed lead defense attorney said: “You will have to determine the credibility of Mr. Hembree based upon everything you’re going to hear. And, ladies and gentlemen, by the time this is over”—he took a brilliant pause for effect—“you wouldn’t believe him if he said the sky was blue.”
V
ery much a woman who was not about to take any bull from anyone without speaking her mind, thirty-six-year-old ADA Stephanie Hamlin, a mother of two, did not have aspirations of becoming a prosecutor when she first considered law school. Hamlin’s goal was to become a defense attorney and fight for the rights of defendants. That would all change after a traumatic event in her life. However, when she started, Hamlin said later, she was all about fulfilling her deep-seated liberal roots, which she had embraced and perfected while in college.
“My mom always said that early on, as a child, I talked about becoming a lawyer because I said I wanted to help people,” Hamlin commented.
Young and pretty, sporting an athlete’s body at five feet five inches tall, with brown hair and hazel-blue eyes, ADA Stephanie Hamlin was born and raised outside Boston. Her mother divorced Stephanie’s father and moved them to Georgia. Stephanie attended law school at the University of Georgia, Athens. It was on that campus that she fell in love with “trial work” and became part of a team that produced mock trials in a tournament setting. They’d travel to different states to compete. Pretty soon, Hamlin found herself running the tournaments within the university, part of a group that decided who would be on the team. And it was during this period, between her second and third year of law school, when Hamlin’s vocational aspirations—that switch from defense to prosecutor—took place.
She was in South Charlotte one afternoon at a family member’s office. Hamlin would borrow the space two or three Sundays prior to a trial competition. She was alone one particular weekend and noticed someone “lurking” about. She had seen him before and thought he was a maintenance worker. But on this day, the man violently assaulted her.
“From that point forward,” the ADA said, “I realized I no longer wanted to become a defense attorney—I just couldn’t do it.”
More than the crime committed against her, Stephanie Hamlin recognized through the experience of becoming a crime victim that there was a desperate need to educate first responders to crime scenes. She saw a hole in the system and hoped with her type A personality, work ethic, and determination—not to mention a desire and firsthand experience—she could fill it.
Late into the morning of October 18, 2011, the state’s first witness, YCSO investigator Alex Wallace, was questioned by Stephanie Hamlin regarding his role in the investigation. Wallace walked jurors through coming upon Heather’s body. This was the best place for the prosecution to begin: the call to go out and initiate the death investigation of a teenager. Through Wallace’s testimony, ADA Hamlin was able to enter into evidence crime scene photos, including Heather’s clothing, and the area where her body was found. This gave the crime scene context. It made it real. Heather’s killer tried to hide her body. He’d tossed her clothes on the side of the roadway, hoping no one would find them. It wasn’t as if she was walking along, fell, hit her head, and suddenly lost her pants, undergarments, and shoes, and then suffocated to death. Heather was stripped naked from the waist down and placed in the brush between two sewer pipes so nobody would find her. Just the fact that her clothes were found down the road indicated her killer did not want her or her clothing to be found.
The state required attorneys to sit behind their tables when questioning witnesses. The only time they could get up and do the traditional
Law & Order
walk in front of the jury box and judge’s bench was during opening and closing arguments. This boded well for the prosecution and its concern for Stephanie Hamlin. Many on the state’s side, including Detective Matt Hensley (who sat with the state every day), believed Hembree despised Hamlin with an intensity so deep he was going to lash out. Maybe Hembree hated all women—but it was clear to Bell and Hensley, who warned Stephanie on occasion, that if he could, Hembree would attack the ADA.
“Be careful when you’re walking over near Hembree’s table,” Hensley warned Hamlin once. “Don’t go near him. He could jump up and stab you in the neck with a pen.”
“There were times when Hembree looked over at our table and appeared frustrated and, at times, confident, with a snake-like grin,” Hensley explained. “Stephanie was sure he was going to lunge our way.... I guess I felt like that could have happened.... Hembree wanted to intimidate and make everyone feel uneasy. He’s just a bully.”
A
lex Wallace’s testimony was cut and paste: a narrative from law enforcement perfectly placed, giving jurors an idea of how the case began.
After Wallace, the state called Walter Pettingill, a North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (NCSBI) forensic examiner, who had provided the state with fingerprint cards, ultimately identifying both Randi and Heather. Pettingill’s testimony was direct. He fingerprinted both girls, ran those prints through the system, and was able to obtain positive identification.
When Pettingill left the courtroom, Randy Clinton, the YCSO investigator who found Heather’s clothes, walked in, raised his right hand, sat down, and told his tale of searching the road and coming upon that piece of red clothing near the bridge. Down the embankment, Clinton explained, they found additional clothing items that the YCSO later proved belonged to Heather Catterton. A ways more, Clinton said, there was a single tennis shoe. The way Clinton explained all of this, it sounded as though Heather’s clothing had been dismembered and then spread about the woods and along the roadside on the border of South and North Carolina to throw investigators off. It was a graphic, ideal metaphor—one that the state could not have planned. The explanation of law enforcement finding her clothing humanized Heather.
It didn’t take but a few minutes, but when Hembree’s defense finished with its unremarkable cross-examination of Randy Clinton, Stephanie Hamlin indicated how late it was getting to begin questioning her next witness. Hamlin said she didn’t want to fight the clock and be stopped midway, adding how “we do have another witness, but it’s a witness that’s going to take far longer [than the previous two] . . . and just for the purposes of interruption, we’d ask that that witness be called first thing in the morning.”
“Very well,” Judge Beal said.
S
tephanie Hamlin’s first superior-court trial as a new ADA took place during the second week of September 2001. On 9/11, that now dark day in American history, there she was in the middle of her first jury trial and it was cut short, obviously, after the world changed and the word “Al-Qaeda”—rightly so—became a household cussword. Hamlin had just entered into her supporting role of ADA for the 27A Prosecutorial District. When Danny Hembree’s name came across her desk, she had been with the office a little over a decade, yet the Hembree trial became the first time she tried a capital felony murder case.
Locke Bell was an elected DA. He had run unopposed, and had been at the desk four years. What made Locke Bell such an asset to the state was his background: a long, affluent career as a defense attorney. This gave Bell the advantage of looking at things from both sides. He knew what it was like to sit on the opposite side of the courtroom and, at times, defend the indefensible.
Hamlin called her boss a “big picture” type of DA, while she stayed focused on details. They didn’t always agree; but in that regard, they worked well together.
“Locke is very smart,” said one colleague. “He has very good ideas. A lot of people expect prosecutors to be very calm, but because he had been a defense attorney for so many years, Locke has that flare and flamboyancy about him—he’s aggressive. He’s straightforward. No joking around.”
With Hamlin calling Detective Brian Bagwell at 9:29
A.M.
on October 19, the second day of trial testimony, it was clear where the state was taking its case. Bagwell, a CSI with the YCSO, had attended Randi’s autopsy. He could bring jurors into the autopsy suite without the glitz, glam, technicality, and often taxing detail a pathologist sometimes overdoes. Bagwell collected evidence from the autopsy, so he was there also to affirm the evidence chain of custody. And, as an added bonus, he had collected Heather’s clothing evidence from the side of the road—bagged and tagged it.
Through Bagwell, Hamlin was able to introduce another round of photographs depicting Heather’s clothing: how it was found, where, and what condition it was in.
Richard Beam had just a few inconsequential questions for the detective. Then, with Bagwell gone, Hamlin announced: “Your Honor, the state is going to call Sommer Heffner.”
Here was the trial’s first taste of a witness who could potentially hurt Danny Hembree, depending on which way the testimony went. Each witness for the state, of course, was offering his or her shovelful of dirt to drop atop Hembree’s casket, but Sommer had that personal story of being with Hembree on the night Heather went missing. Besides Hembree, Sommer and her boyfriend were the last to see Heather Catterton alive. Hamlin and Bell knew Sommer’s testimony had the potential to go either way, however.
As Sommer walked toward the jury box, Hembree stared at her. Sommer was a bit beaten and battered by her addictions. She wore a blue hoodie. Her brunette hair was streaked with blond highlights. She looked tired, but determined. Throughout the entire ordeal of dealing with the DA’s office, Sommer had no trouble admitting her faults. She was well prepared to be brutally honest.
Sommer was twenty years old. She told jurors her story of meeting up with Heather on that day, bringing her boyfriend along, and then taking off with Hembree, Heather, and her boyfriend for a night of partying.
“Crack cocaine?” Stephanie Hamlin asked, referring to the drug of choice that night. “Do you—and I’m not going to ask who you got that from—but were you the actual person that got the crack cocaine?”
“No.”
“Who was?”
“Danny.”
“And what, if anything, happened at that point?” the ADA said, asking Sommer what Hembree’s intent, by providing them with crack, had been. He wasn’t paying for the drugs because he was a nice guy. They both knew “free” crack came with a price. In fact, before they could even smoke any of it, Heather had been expected to pay up.
“Heather and Danny went into a bedroom, and I’m guessing they did a date,” Sommer explained. “And afterward, after they were done, we all got high.”
“So at some point Danny and Heather were left alone together.”
“Yeah.”
“Did they remain in this trailer?”
“Yeah.”
“And then after—how long did that last until they came back out? Do you remember?”
“About ten . . . fifteen minutes.”
“And you described this as a ‘date.’ What do you mean, ‘did a date’?”
“Had sex.”
“And then you indicated that at that point, when they finished, you got high.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you have any crack cocaine with you?”
“No.”
“Did you have any other drugs with you?”
“No.”
“How did you get high?”
“I smoked the crack he bought.”
Sommer established one of Hembree’s core MOs when he was with Gastonia females: dangling crack cocaine in front of them as a lure to do what he wanted. He’d done this for years. He was known for it.
As her testimony continued throughout much of the day, Sommer explained how they arrived back at Hembree’s mother’s house after going to the Bi-Lo to exchange the coins for cash, and how the argument between Hembree and her boyfriend led to her boyfriend’s ejection from Momma’s house.
“And what happened?” Hamlin asked.
“We smoked some more,” Sommer testified, “and then we ransacked his mother’s house because he told me and Heather and [my boyfriend] that there was at least [two hundred] or three hundred dollars stashed somewhere, and we never did find the money. But he become real, real violent. Real mean.”
“Okay. Now, you were going to trade partners and be with Danny. Was this something that you wanted to do?”
“No,” Sommer admitted. “I was wanting to do it to get more crack.” She had been bitten by the bug and was now in a position where she would do anything, within reason, to get more. Hembree was the man with the money and the means.
“You were going to do it to get more crack?”
“Yes.”
“And you indicated that after you ransacked the house—well, did you find any money?”
“No. . . .”
“And what do you mean by ‘he became agitated’? Who are you referring to?”
“Danny.”
“And describe that.”
“He was just threatening to shoot [my boyfriend] and kill him, and he ended up locking him out of the house. And I had to persuade, or beg him, actually, to let him back in because it was freezing cold outside. . . .”
Sommer explained the effect crack has on the body and the mind. Then she described how the night got late and Hembree left her boyfriend out in the cold again at the liquor store—this time, leaving him behind for good. This gave Hamlin the opportunity to walk Sommer into how Hembree was the last person to be with Heather before she went missing. Sommer explained how she’d begged Heather to get out of Hembree’s car that night.
Through Sommer’s believable testimony, the jury now had an image of Hembree and the victim driving off into the night alone.
The only impeachable part of Sommer’s testimony was her reputation. The rest of it was the facts as she had recalled them. Sommer’s boyfriend had backed her up and given police the same story.
Before the end of her direct examination, Hamlin asked Sommer if she recalled what Heather was wearing.
“She had on blue jeans, white tennis shoes, a gray hoodie, toe socks. I don’t remember what color shirt she had on.”
Hamlin showed Sommer photos of the clothing items and Sommer verified the photos.
Richard Beam cleared his throat and asked Sommer, as his first cross-examination question, how many times she spoke to the police throughout their investigation.
“Two or three times,” she answered.
He asked the same question, substituting the DA’s office for the police.
Sommer gave the same answer.
The big revelation Beam was working up to came down to Sommer, apparently, once telling police that her boyfriend had not smoked crack on that night, while on another occasion telling them he had. It was, in the scope of the facts Sommer had testified to, insignificant. The bottom line was that Sommer had given the police different facts at different times. This happens routinely. Cops interview sources. They recall various facts and different times. What Sommer didn’t do, however, was change those facts, which would have been a red flag indicating possible deception. Sommer had stuck to the same story, time after time.
Beam kept his focus on this item as Hamlin objected. Through those objections and an eventual discussion without the jury present, Beam said he wanted to offer that Sommer Heffner was meeting Heather on that day to celebrate Heather’s release from prison. However, Hamlin staunchly objected on the basis that their reason for meeting was irrelevant, and the prison comment would, of course, paint the victim in a bad light.
They battled it out. The judge finally said he was not going to allow it. It didn’t matter that Heather had just gotten out of prison. In the judge’s ruling, it was the object of cross-examination in a court of law to bring into account a witness’s credibility. The victim had to be protected at all costs.
The jury returned. Beam got Sommer to admit she smoked a lot of crack that night and also drank a lot of booze. Then Beam was able to work into a question how Sommer had possibly taken some of Hembree’s money that night, which was the reason why Hembree became angry.
Sommer did not respond to it.
As they went back and forth, it became apparent that all the defense had here was the possibility of bashing Sommer’s reputation and magnifying her addictions, which she had admitted to readily.
As the morning drew to a close, Beam had Sommer focus on the things Heather had done to feed her own addictions, which Sommer had explained. This had all been said already—there was nothing groundbreaking about Sommer’s descriptions of Heather trading sex for drugs.
A tactic many defense attorneys choose is bouncing around a lot. They skip from the beginning of a narrative to the end, back to the middle, and then back to the beginning, thus confusing the witness so she has a hard time recalling certain facts. If you’re lying, this can work to catch you. But it didn’t work here. Sommer was speaking her truth. It didn’t make a difference how it was packaged: That night was a moment in her life she was never going to forget. Her best friend went missing and wound up dead.
As the lunch recess came, jurors were given their instructions not to discuss the case among themselves. They would all return, Beal explained, at two in the afternoon promptly. As the jury was excused, the judge indicated that the lawyers needed to hash out yet another issue Beam wanted to approach with Sommer.
Beam explained his concern about not being able to ask Sommer certain questions about Heather because, in the truth of the matter, Beam explained, “Our defense is that she (Heather) ingested huge amounts of cocaine and it killed her. The fact that she has a continuing cocaine habit is relevant to that issue. Not only that, I was under the impression the whole theory of the state’s motive for my client was that he killed this lady because of her engaging in sex with black men. Unless I’ve missed that somewhere . . .”
The judge seemed a bit agitated. He explained that the state did not need to prove motive. Motive was not a legal requirement. The judge called it “rule number one!”
As the judge explained, Beam piped in, standing to his feet, tipping his head to the side, stating, “Well . . .”
“Have a seat, Mr. Beam,” the judge snapped.
Beam said all he wanted was “parameters” regarding bringing in Heather’s reputation.
Judge Beal said he understood, but it was up to the state to set those parameters with their objections.
That settled—however confusing it sounded—they broke for lunch.
After the recess, Sommer was back on the stand. Beam asked a few more questions; Hamlin a few follow-ups; then Sommer was cut loose.
In the end, despite all of the arguing back and forth about what she could and could not testify to, Sommer Heffner held her ground, kept her composure, and gave jurors her truth—as best she could recall it. And that was all, Sommer later said, she had wanted to do for a best friend who was never going to “get to meet my children.”